Aadil Bandukwala's Blog

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Get 4 Business Class Flight Tickets + 5 Economy Tickets on Vistara for INR 11,800/- All Inclusive!

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invest 11,800 INR, Get 4 Business Class Flight Tickets in India

My most recent post entitled How to Score an Annual Vacation for Free using Credit Card Points in India gained a lot of traction last week thanks to my friends like Rishabh who were happily sharing the same on social media. As promised in my last post, I’d like to share with you today details about the Axis Bank Vistara Infinite Credit Card that helps you score 4 Business Class Flight Tickets and 5 Economy Tickets for a mere investment of 11,800 INR. Lets dig into the specifics.

Benefits of Axis Vistara Infinite Credit Card

This is a great card for people who have an appetite to spend 7,50,000 INR on their credit card in a year. You can chose to spend money on any transaction and every transaction which will help you score frequent flyer miles on one of India’s favourite airlines – Vistara.  Let’s get into the specifics of how this card works and what are the benefits one can derive out of this.

Get 4 Complimentary Business Class Tickets on Vistara: As soon as you sign up for the Axis Vistara Infinite Credit Card, you’re issued one complimentary business class ticket. There after, every time you cross a total cumulative spend of 2,50,000 on your card, you keep getting business class tickets. In a year, you can get a maximum of 4 business class tickets. What that means is, if you spend 7,50,000 on your card in a year, you end up getting 4 complimentary business class tickets on Vistara. How cool is that! 🙂

Score points every time you swipe your card and get 5 free Economy Flight tickets in a year in addition to your 4 Complimentary Business Class Tickets: Accrue Club Vistara Points on every transaction. What that means is for every online and offline transaction you make, you earn 6 CV Points for every INR 200 you spend on your Axis Bank Vistara Infinite Credit Card. These points can later be redeemed to either buy Vistara flight tickets or get a cabin upgrade of your choice. Lets take a moment to understand what this means. Say you spend 7,50,000 INR on this card in one year – what that does is, it helps you score 22,500 Club Vistara Points. Also, if you end up spending 100,000 INR in your first three months, Vistara awards you 10,000 Bonus Miles. With a total of 32,500 points, you can score 5 free Economy tickets per below with these points. For a Bangalore Delhi Economy ticket, you need to spend 6,000 miles. Spend 30,000 miles and you can easily score 5 one way tickets in economy on Vistara! 🙂

Economy Award Ticket on Vistara using Axis Vistara Infinite Credit Card

Upgrade to Club Vistara Gold from Day Zero: If you’re a frequent flyer, you realise that business travel can *get to you* at times. There’s just so many queues at the airport right from the time you check in to head to security to then wait for boarding the aircraft, get a seat of your choice, land, disembark and then wait for your bags to arrive at the baggage terminal. This card bumps you up straight to Club Vistara Gold from the day you get the card. What that means is – even if you don’t fly Vistara a lot, you still remain a Gold member throughout the year. Benefits include the below:

  • Priority Airport Check-In: Irrespective of the class of ticket you’ve purchased, whether it is economy / premium economy / business class, everytime you’d like to check in, you check in straight from the business class counter and don’t have to wait in the long economy queue.
  • Increased Baggage Allowance: When you’re flying any airline in India, you can carry 15 Kgs of luggage. By being a Club Vistara Gold Member, you’d now get 10 kgs additional when you fly. So every time you fly, you can carry 25 Kgs of luggage! 🙂
  • Priority Boarding: Often boarding the aircraft is time consuming as you have to stand in a long queue – as people flock to board as soon as the airline commences boarding. With the Club Vistara Gold Membership, you can board via the separate business class lane – either before boarding commences for economy or at any time of your choice.
  • Complimentary Lounge Access: Irrespective of whether you fly Economy / Premium Economy / Business, everytime you fly Vistara, you’d get complimentary lounge access across the country. Lounge access will not apply only if you’ve bought a Vistara Lite ticket.
  • Priority Baggage Handling: With this, your checked-in bag will arrive at the luggage belt in the first batch – along with the bags of the business class flyers – so you can quickly exit the airport to your final destination. Big time saving feature this one.
  • 3 Upgrade Vouchers: This is one of my favourite features of the Club Vistara Gold Membership. Each voucher allows you to upgrade your ticket to the next available cabin. So if you’re flying economy, on presenting your voucher, you get upgraded to premium economy. If you’re flying premium economy, present your voucher and you get upgraded to business class. How awesome is that! You’ll get three such upgrade vouchers that you can use over a one year period commencing from the date of the issue of the vouchers to you.

Other Benefits on the Card: There are tons of other benefits on the card, like free lounge access when you’re not flying Vistara, complimentary golf access, complimentary insurance in the form of Air Accident Cover of upto INR 2,50,00,000, Purchase Protection Cover upto INR 1,00,000, Lost Card Liability upto 100% your credit limit and more. Details here.

Bottom Line: Invest 11,800/- upfront, spend 7.5 Lacs in a year and get: 

  • 4 Complimentary Business Class Tickets
  • 5 Complimentary Economy Tickets
  • Club Vistara Gold Membership
  • 3 Upgrade Vouchers
  • Lounge Access Across the Country 
  • Lots More

Did you enjoy this post? Moreover, how likely are you to get this card? Please chime in with your comments! 🙂

How to score an Annual Vacation for Free using Credit Card Points in India!

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Score your annual vacation for free using credit card points

For long, I’ve been an active user of credit cards. I got my first credit card way back in 2006. However, my usage was sporadic and predominantly for international travel. Until a couple of years back, when I figured credit cards are a great tool to unlock a bundle of rewards. I’ve been using them for the last couple of years to pay for my annual vacations. A lot of my friends keep asking me – how does this work? Is scoring annual vacations for free using credit cards in India really possible? To put together how I scored my annual vacation this year in Leh for free, I thought I’d put together a post.

  • Step 1: The first step is to really understand your monthly spending pattern.
  • Step 2: Once you’ve figured that out, you need to go ahead and map it to the right credit cards available in the market.
  • Step 3: Have a clear Credit Card Usage Strategy across the year
  • Step 4: Score points by using the right card at the right merchants on a regular basis
  • Step 5: Score that vacation! 🙂

Let me start out my disclosing my Annual Credit Card Strategy for last year: April 2017 to March 2018. My credit card strategy was to use only two credit cards for all my spends across the year. These cards included:

For this particular vacation though, I relied on only one credit card – which is the HDFC Diners Black Credit Card – and I’ll restrict my post to this card today. I’ll blog about the Axis Vistara Infinite Credit Card in a few days from now outlining why it made sense for me and the benefits I scored.

HDFC Bank Diners Black Credit Card

This is a great card for those who:

  • Travel extensively
  • Shop often online
  • Have an array of international transactions month on month

Here’s how the benefits of the card stack up:

  1. Free Lounge Access Globally: The card comes with free unlimited domestic and international lounge access across the world.
  2. Gives you 33% Flat Cashback on specific online platforms on every transaction you make: I’m not kidding. For the below listed platforms, for any and every transaction you make, the card gives you a flat 33% cashback upto a maximum of 25,000 INR cash back per month. I’ve stacked them into primarily 4 categories:
  3. Flat 33% Cashback on HDFC Smart Buy Partners upto a maximum of 25,000 INR cash back per month which include:
  4. Flat 33% Cashback on All International Transactions: upto a maximum of 10,000 INR cash back per month.
  5. Other Benefits: A ton of other benefits including a fab golf program that are listed here.

Annual Fee: This card comes with an annual fee of INR 10,000 per year.

How to get the Annual Fee Waived Off on the HDFC Bank Diners Black Credit Card:

  • If you’re an active customer with HDFC Bank for a few years, often the annual charges are automatically waived off.
  • The gentleman who pitched the card to me requested me to put my Airtel Mobile Bill for automatic payment via the credit card every month and requested me to apply for an add on card on my wife’s name. He said if I opt in for the above two conditions, he’ll get the annual fee waived off. I totally opted in for it as it made sense to me.

Now that I’d got my credit card – which is the HDFC Diners Black, I began to put a structure to my spending habits month on month. I figured the below is what I spend on a regular basis month on month and basis that, the table below also outlines the amount of cash back I’ll score month on month.

diners black credit card cash back example

Like you can see on the above table, I noticed that if I were spending 34,000 INR per month, and if I spent that money at the merchants that HDFC Bank was promoting – like shop often from Flipkart and not Amazon, travel by Uber instead of Ola, book flight tickets / bus tickets via RedBus and Cleartrip instead of Makemytrip, it would get me a fabulous cash back of flat 33% month on month – which meant that I would make at-least 1,20,000 INR in cash back in one year. On every other transaction, HDFC Bank Diners Black Credit Card gives you a flat cash back of 3.3% – which again keeps getting added to your cashback total.

I ended up spending a little more than the above mentioned amounts on my HDFC Bank Diners Black Credit Card last month and therefore had more than 1,20,000 INR in points. The best part of the HDFC Bank Diners Black Credit Card is that it 1 point = 1 rupee. When planning our annual vacation, my wife wanted to head to Leh as she’d never been there. I’d last been there on a trip back in 2010 and couldn’t wait to get back there too. So in December 2017 last year, I begun planning for my annual vacation this year – in April 2018.

The Annual Vacation – Bangalore to Leh to Delhi to Bangalore

I was able to book return flight tickets on Jet Airways for my wife and me from Bangalore to Leh and back – with a stop in Delhi for a couple of days for 24,000 INR all inclusive. I waned to ensure that we stayed at one of the best properties in Leh – so we ended up picking the best place in Leh per my knowledge – The Grand Dragon Ladakh.

The Grand Dragon Ladakh

The Grand Dragon Ladakh Restaurant

Aadil and Saniya at Pangong Lake

After wrapping up Leh, we headed to Delhi to spend a couple of days there – stayed at the Luxurious The Leela Ambience Convention Hotel, indulged in some shopping and of-course, sampled the incredible food that Delhi has to offer.

As you can see, the staff at Leela Ambiance Convention Hotel, Delhi were quick to realise Saniya and me were celebrating our wedding anniversary and they surprised us with a celebration in our room upon arrival.

What made this entire trip special was the fact that the entire trip, our flight tickets from Bangalore to Delhi to Leh to Delhi to Bangalore and back, our accommodation at The Grand Dragon Ladakh and our accommodation at The Leela Ambiance Convention Hotel, Delhi was completely paid for by the points I earned on the HDFC Bank Diners Black Credit Card.

So there you have it – it is no myth that your credit card can pay for your annual vacation. So long as you have a planned credit card spend strategy for the year, so long as you’ve mapped it to the credit card you’ve chosen based on your strategy and the rewards it unlocks, so long as you’re disciplined in spending at the right merchant to get you the right deal, its incredibly simple how amazing things can happen. Question to you then, where are you planning to head to your your next annual vacation? And whats your credit card miles earning / point acquisition strategy? Whats your favorite Credit Card Program? Would love hear from you! 🙂

Performance. Style. Grip. Zip. Introducing the All New Honda Jazz!

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honda jazz #allnewjazz

Life is a stage and you get only one performance. Make it a good one!

The above statement is something that deeply resonates with me. The above is something that I strongly believe all of us should aspire for and strive towards. The above is also something that I think Honda took extremely seriously when it decided to build a car for someone who never settles for less. A car that’s BIG on comfort – on space – on mileage and on innovation. Yet small enough to maneuverer you swiftly around the city and across long terrains even, for a relaxed and comforting drive.

This is a food blog and normally I do not post auto related content. But this one, is special. This one, is worth it. This one, I have to share with the world. It all started about two weeks back when I heard from Honda. They wanted to fly me down to Delhi and then take me to the Buddh International Circuit – India’s only Formula1 Track to test drive their all new Honda Jazz. I jumped at the opportunity but ofcourse, not only because I wanted to experience the thrill and adrenaline that legends like Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton experience on the circuit, but also because Honda is a brand that I resonate with. My Dad’s been driving a Honda City for half a decade now and I’ve had the pleasure of driving a Honda Amaze for more than a year.

The experience at The Buddh International Circuit was incredible if you will. Just the very feeling of seeing the shiny new Honda Jazz lined up on the circuit gave me the chills. I first inspected the car – was impressed by the exteriors – the shiny new coat of carnedigan red immediately caught my eye. In my very first glance, I was enthralled by the sleek yet suave front grille with premium black gloss and chrome finish right next to which are sporty head lamps that give the Jazz this instant sparkle!

If the exteriors are something that awe-struck you, wait till you get into the car. The Jazz has premium and spacious interiors with beige leather seats, an integrated 15.7 cm touch screen to make life a drool when on a ride, automatic air conditioning with a touch screen control panel to pamper you, a multi functional steering wheel with audio control, hands free telephone, an advanced multi information combimeter with eco assist ambient rings and believe it or not – paddle shifts to ensure you’re on the money while driving!

Another feature that I was supremely impressed by is that the Honda Jazz comes with four different seating combinations called Magic Seats.What this means is you can configure the Honda Jazz to different seating modes based on your needs. One of my favorite mode is the Witty mode which enables an Jazz to carry a bicycle inside the car – how cool is that!

Come to technology – Honda has been delivering on technology seamlessly and consistently for years now and is no different on the Jazz. The Petrol i-Vtech features a 1.2 Litre Engine with 90 PS powered by a light weight and compact cut with torque convertor available in five speed manual transmission. The i-Dtech on the other hand delivers best in segment fuel efficient diesel engine with a promise of 27 kmpl with a 1.5L Engine that roars with 100 PS powered by low friction technology.

While the drive across The Buddh International Circuit was dream, the Honda Jazz is nothing short of one. The feel when you get into the car and fire on the engine gives you an uber comforting feeling – the drive smooth as silk, the steering aligns to your hands and the tyres grip the surface giving you balance, stability and power when you need it. I was able to rip the Jazz on the 1.2 kilometer straight at the circuit to about 130 kmph and it didn’t wobble – was steady and gushing for more. If you’re eyeing a car in this particular segment, the Honda Jazz is a bet you’d want to make!

Honeyed Chicken Wings – Your Zen Moment in Bangalore!

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Honeyed Chicken Wings at Sunnys

While food is a basic necessity, it’s also something that comforts people. For the aficionados though, if cooked, described, presented and tastes exactly what it should be like – it hits the spot, it delights them. Put’s them into a zone like no other – for that one moment when you take the first bite, when it’s aroma hits your nose for the very first time, when your taste buds sense it’s very first morsel, you experience zen.

Zen is exactly what comfort food is all about. And for those of us who’re food evangelists, every now and then we crave for that comfort food. I experienced this craving lately when I craved for Honeyed Chicken Wings with a tinge of zesty lemon. Fired up my car, took along the better half and my three year old, programmed the GPS to Lavelle Road in Bangalore and hit Sunnys.

Sunnys is a piquant place nestled at Lavelle Road. It has a nice rustic ambiance in the form a gardened seating if you will on the outside and then also a timber like air conditioned seating inside. We opted for the former as my toddler wanted to run around and play. Got straight into the act and for my first appetizer ordered exactly what I’d come there for – honeyed lemon chicken wings. 

Boy oh boy, weren’t we delighted! The wings were cooked perfectly, the balance of lemon zest and the sweetness of the honey were precision perfect, the honey lemon glaze served alongside tickled our senses. My wife Saniya had this uber gorgeous smile on her face when she bit into it, my son Hammaad – a finicky eater, instantly said – “This is Awesome Dad! I want more!” – and yours truly, well, yours truly just experienced that Zen moment!

It’s not just about you enjoying the food – true happiness and zen are when you’re family and friends experience exactly the same amount of joy if not a little more than you do. Food is not something that you have three times a day to survive, food is something you experience every single day – that makes your life better and more worthwhile, one dish at a time! #Indulge! 🙂

 

Desert Goodness at Monkey Bar

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Lemon Cake at Monkey Bar, Bangalore

 

Some people have a sweet tooth. Me, I have sweet teeth. I happened to visit Monkey Bar at Indira Nagar in Bangalore with my office colleagues for some after office fun. While we savored the Crab Rangoon, Shaami Sliders, Tiger Beef, Butterfly Chicken and even gorged one some scintillating Berry Pulao, but what I loved the most about Monkey Bar was their desert.

We ordered for a humble Lemon Cake. When we were served the Lemon Cake, all the humility instantly evaporated if you will. The above picture will tell you why. It was this gorgeous sponge cake with a tinge of very subtle lemon flavor that was helped with a generous portion of lemon curd. The lemon curd added the zing required to turn that sponge cake into a winner.

But that’s not all, the fresh mangoes served along side, gave it the much needed balance that would have other wise been an absolute sinner. We weren’t complaining though. Didn’t stop at one. Had to repeat the order four more times till our cravings were satisfied. 🙂

The Most Amazing Raan Biryani Ever!

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Raan Biryani at Shalimar, Mohammed Ali Road, Mumbai

So yours truly was visiting Mumbai for just about 36 hours. Fly in – in the evening – do business meetings the next day and fly out immediately. While I was planning my trip, I had to plan a foodie evening in Mumbai. So I called up a close friend – Mahesh and asked him if we can plan something. The foodie that he is, Mahesh’s answer was – but of course! 🙂

Mahesh suggested we do Mohammed Ali Road and in particular Shalimar Restaurant near Kalbadevi. I jumped at the opportunity and so did other folks from our Mumbai Office in the form of Manish, Ketaki and Jyoti. No sooner did I land in the evening, I went straight to our office at BKC in Mumbai, picked them up and off we were to Shalimar.

If there was one thing that was super good at Shalimar, it was the Raan Biryani. The portion was generous, the red meat extremely tender, the rice cooked just about right, the fragrance from the spices – was an aroma that has lasted with me even today. To top it all, the fried onions served along side called Brista just made the Biryani even more delectable.

But then the Raan Biryani wasn’t just the only thing we had. Before indulging into the gastronomical delight, we also savored the galactic Nawaabi Chicken Gravy with Reshmi Paratha [Deep Fried Indian Bread], had Bheja Masala to go with it and washed it down with the yummy Shalimar Special Faalooda. An evening that all of us, will cherish for long!

Troika – Comfort Asian Food

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Crispy Fish Coconut Chilly at Troika, Bangalore

So this one evening last month the wife felt like dining at one of the roof top restaurants in Bangalore. You know fresh air, the view, ambiance, a little bit of music, the works. Yours truly was craving for some comfort Asian food. Looked up Zomato and the menu of Troika intrigued me. In half an hour, we were at Troika, at the roof top restaurant at 100 Ft Road Indira Nagar in Bangalore, all set for a great evening.

Since Asian food was the craving, we started off with Crispy Fish Coconut Chilly. Like the name suggests, this tongue tingling delicacy is crisp Basa slices tossed with coconut cream, garlic and chilly, seasoned with Thai herbs. The dish did thorough justice to the way the menu described it and brought out signature thai flavors – the palate was delighted 🙂

We further ventured into Rochaedo Chicken Dumplings with Sweet and Sour Tamarind Glaze. What I loved about this dish was the fusion of Goan and Asian flavors. Rochaedo is very much Goan but the sweet and sour tamarind glaze when infused with Rochaedo created a bag full of flavors that came across as comfort asian fusion food. But then the evening had just gotten started.

For mains we decided to indulge in Tai Chi Chicken which is chicken stir fried in oyster chilly pepper sauce served on a bed of sticky rice. Again, something uniquely comfort Asian that was very palatable. All in all, a happy belly! 🙂

Grilled Fish with Buttered Carrot Puree & Peas

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Grilled Salmon

So in 2012, I took off on this vacation to Bali – where my objective was three fold: 1) Make sure that yours truly and Her Majesty [Read My Better Half, My Wife] have a good time 2) Indulge in Amazing Sea Food 3) Go crazy over Water Sports.

We decided to stay at Ayodya Resort Bali which is located at Nusa Dua. Designed to resemble a Balinese water palace, Ayodya Resort is embellished with stone statues, fountains and lagoon pools that exude the exotic grandeur of the island. The rooms were nice and spacious – the food excellent and the resort by itself – huge and very pleasing.

The resort has seven different restaurants that cater to a variety of taste buds from Balinese to Asian to English to Japanese. The one that I liked the most was a restaurant that was located at the main lobby overlooking the lagoon and the ocean called Java Hut.

The sea food at this place was exquisite – the above picture in this post I’m certain does justice to what I’m saying. So what was the dish all about again? Grilled Fish with buttered carrot puree and peas. Whenever I look at his picture, it almost immediately makes me want to go back to Bali again – to experience the food again, to scuba dive again, to explore the island, to celebrate life! 🙂

Scealta di Risotto

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Tuscana Pizzeria Chennai

A city I started frequenting lately for business is Chennai and on my last trip there, one of my senior colleagues at work was kind enough to take me out to lunch at this place called Tuscana Pizzeria. This is a nice Italian joint located at Wallace Garden Road, Nungambakkam.

I love Italian cuisine. Whether it is the range of pastas or pizzas, gnocchis or breads, I love them all. What I enjoy most in the Italian cuisine is a well cooked Risotto. And when that well cooked risotto comes in the form of Grilled Madras Prawns tossed in Parsley Garlic Butter, you know you have a winner. At Tuscana Pizzeria, they call this dish Scealta di Risotto. After wiping it clean, I got the expression *Happy Belly*!

This is one place that I’d definitely go back to, to satisfy my risotto craving whenever I’m in Chennai. Bon Appetite! 🙂

Naan Serai at Caravan Serai!

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Naan Serai at Caravan Serai

In my last blog post on Chocolateria San Churro, I shared how me and my colleagues indulged in Churros for dessert. What I also mentioned was that we had dinner a little earlier at this place called Caravan Serai. Caravan Serai is a nice place in Bandra West, Mumbai that serves Indian / Afghan / Mughlai Cuisine.

What we really enjoyed at Caravan Serai was something called Jhinga Nisha. These are king / jumbo prawns marinated in creamy yogurt flavored with cheese and Indian spices. We also tried the Mutton Galouti Kebabs – but that is something I didn’t quite enjoy. For mains, we had Bhuna Gosht which hit our palette really well.

What was the highlight of our meal though was something called Naan Serai. This is one gigantic naan that one will really enjoy. Look at the picture above – it is huge! We were six of us who dined at this place. All six combined couldn’t finish this one naan. Was it nice though? Yes. Crispy? Yes. Will I order it again? Yes. Will I be able to finish it? Lets order and find out! 🙂